The title of Richard Clarke's article is: “In foreign
policy, indecision is action” by which he means to say that to refrain from
making a decision one way or the other on a given issue is an option that has
an effect similar to that of making a decision. That's because indecision
carries consequences just the same.
The article also has a subtitle that goes: “A painful lesson
for President Obama in Syria .”
It was published on October 8, 2015 in the New York Daily News. The aim of the
writer is (a) to give an honest appraisal of how he sees President Obama has
acted in the Syrian issue, (b) to discuss the reasons why he believes the
President took the measures that he did, and (c) why the President refrained from
taking other measures.
Clarke says that in the final analysis, President Obama
decided on a course that was essentially inaction because he only supported the
rebels who fought against ISIS and not those
who fought against the Syrian government. He understands the President's
decision, he says, given “the costs of the U.S.
effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq ,
and even the smaller effort to topple Moammar Khadafy in Libya . Both
dethronings had created catastrophes.” Nevertheless, he has reservations, he
says.
He goes on to say that President Obama preferred to do
nation building at home rather than fight wars abroad. In his view, this
decision had nefarious consequences because: “the U.S. inaction temporarily created a
vacuum, but as nature abhors a vacuum, so do nations and terrorist groups.”
Thus, what Clarke is saying here is that it's better to send American troops
abroad to fight in perpetual foreign wars, than to seek preventing catastrophes
like Iraq and Libya by
staying out of everyone else's business, and by doing nation building at home.
Missing in the Clarke presentation is the fact that ISIS and
the other groups did not come into being because it saw a vacuum and decided to
occupy it; they all came into being because they did not like the idea of
foreign powers occupying their space. They fought to retake what's theirs, and
when the Americans and their allies failed to show up in some of the places,
the terrorists called on them to come and get them because they were full of
fury and were spoiling for a fight. Thus, the theory of America
creating a vacuum where it fails to poke its nose is a bogus claim endowed with
a nose that's so elongated, it would scare even Pinocchio.
Sensing that his theory will not survive close scrutiny,
Richard Clarke backpedals somewhat as can be seen in the following passage:
“That is not to say that we should now rush into the Syria conflict to compete
with Russia, Iran and half a dozen other nations who are now playing a role.”
Neat, huh! It’s like riding a bicycle backward.
However, because he could not end his presentation at that
point without doing two things: (1) fabricate an argument that would blame someone
for some imaginary failure, and (2) pave the way for the dressing of a road-map
showing the way forward -- the author has added the following: “The time when
U.S. action could have been determinative passed more than two years ago.” That
is, Clarke blames Obama for a failure that he prevented from happening, as if
he had allowed the failure to happen. Go figure.
So now, the author is ready to draw a road-map for the way
forward. He begins by telling what the moral of the story is. He says this: “as
much as we might wish we were Norway
or Singapore ,
we are not. We cannot pick and choose where to get involved.” Wow! Did you see
that? He says America 's
decision is not America 's
to make. But whose is it to make? Nobody, he says. It is nobody's decision to
make but … and there is a but … “we cannot put blinders on and just look at
solving our internal problems,” he goes on to say. Pow!
Did you get the gist of that, my friend? Richard Clarke is
saying that when local needs compete with external requests to get militarily
involved abroad, America
must not stop and think what to do. Oh yeah! Why is that? Good question. And
here is the answer: “The U.S.
and its Presidents are not free to ignore global instability. As bad as we make
things, if we do nothing, they get bad enough that they affect our allies.”
Thus, he recommends that America thoughtlessly grab its war
gear and fly to where a fictitious vacuum may be created, and fill that
non-vacuum to protect America’s counterfeit “ally” they call Israel.